Edward Fretz: A daring businessman and a valuable Pottstown citizen

By Michael T. Snyder, Journal Register News Service

Sunday, April 7, 2013

For all you Jeopardy fans, the answer is: Who were Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Edward Fretz? The question: Successful men who started their business in a garage. Of course everybody has heard of Edison and Ford, but who was Edward Fretz?

The short answer is Fretz was an intelligent, ambitious and daring businessman who for almost four decades was one of Pottstown’s most valuable citizens.

A son of Elias and Anna (Sheip) Fretz, Edward was born Sept. 15, 1864, in Hilltown Township, Bucks County. Soon after his birth, his father moved his family to Philadelphia, but Edward later spent several years living with an uncle in Skippack because the public school there offered a better education than he could get in the City of Brotherly Love.

At a time when a high school diploma was rarity, Fretz went beyond that and continued his education at the West Chester Normal School, now West Chester University. A few terms there were sufficient to put the 18-year-old Fretz back in a Skippack public school, this time as the teacher.

The young pedagogue spent his summers working for The Philadelphia Press and, in the process, discovered he was cut out to be a businessman. To this end, he formed a partnership with Emmanuel R. Cassel and in 1898 they somehow scraped together enough money to buy from A.C. Buckwalter a combination book store, stationery and news agency at 209 High St. in Pottstown.

So, in 1891 Fretz and his partner rented rooms in Pottstown’s Shuler Hotel and began running their new business.

It wasn’t long until the men began selling bicycles.

At first blush, selling bikes at a newspaper/book store seems like an odd choice but, as most townspeople didn’t own a horse and automobiles were still pretty much in the realm of science fiction, bicycles were very popular, not just for recreation but as method of transportation.

The “wheels” — as they were called in the day — they sold were made by in his spare time by William I. Grubb, a Pottstown carpenter, who worked in a stable at the back of his house at 355 Walnut St.

In 1892, Fretz, Cassel, and Grubb formed the Light Cycle Co. Tiny local businesses like this were very common at the time, but Fretz decided to kick it up a notch. As he told the story to a Mercury reporter 57 years later, Fretz packed up two of Grubb’s bicycles and took them Newark, N.J., to look for a large dealer who would sell them.

Why Newark? That answer has been lost to history. But he entered the first prosperous location he saw and by the time he left some hours later, Fretz had sold the two bicycles and taken an order for 600 more.

Grubb, who knew he couldn’t build that many bikes, greeted the news of the order with opened-mouthed astonishment, and when he regained his power of speech told Fretz that he “might be a good salesman,” but that he was “also a damned fool.”

Fretz and Grubb set out to raise the necessary money to allow them to expand their bicycle business. After two weeks of making their pitch to Pottstown bankers and businessmen, they discovered that none of them thought manufacturing bicycles was an idea worth investing in.

Fretz, undaunted, made a return visit to the president of the Security Trust Co. Whatever he told the company president that time worked because Fretz left the bank with $2,500 in cash and another $800 for the first sale of stock.

It was onward and upward from that point. Before long, the partners had enough money to build the first Light Cycle Co. building, and by 1916 the plant stretched from the east side of South Washington Street (this would eventually become the site of Doehler-Jarvis) to the westside of South Adams Street.

However, the rise in popularity of the automobile in the first decade of the 20th century drove the bicycle to the wall and almost drove the Light Cycle Co. out of business. The every adaptable and daring Edward Fretz found a way to keep the machines running by switching to the manufacture of automobile parts.

Fretz, who obviously was a born salesman, went on the road to sell his product to car makers. One company needed a differential gear made of aluminum. Fretz didn’t know how to do it, but the same man who was optimistic enough to take an order for 600 bicycles when he didn’t know how he could build them was also sure he could find a way to fill this order.

Fretz found the way right in his own backyard. Pottstown resident Calvin Romig, who lived with his family at 44 Beech St., was an iron molder who, like William Grubb, had a little shop on his property where he made brass castings on the side. After listening to Fretz’s pitch, Romig went to work and found a method of manufacturing automobile parts from aluminum castings.

Because the use of aluminum cast parts made it cheaper to manufacture an automobile, Fretz not only saved his business, he also found a way to make it grow, which meant more jobs in Pottstown. Eventually the Light Cycle Co. expanded its line of products to include parts cast in brass and other metals as well as motors for boats, airplanes, and automobiles.

Fretz sold his interest in the Light Cycle Co. in 1924 but remained on the company’s board of directors for two more years.

Fretz’s greatest legacy to Pottstown was persuading Spicer Manufacturing Co. to move its plant to Pottstown in 1919. Spicer occupied the vacant Chadwick Motor plant on South Keim Street and over the years it grew to the point where it provided 2,000 jobs for Pottstown area residents.

Fretz was also deeply involved in the Pottstown community. A longtime member of Trinity Reformed Church, Fretz was an elder and superintendent of the Sunday schools for 40 years. He was also involved in Rotary and was a charter member of the Pottstown chapter.

Seven years after he came to Pottstown, Edward Fretz gave up the single life and married Virginia C. Hoyer of Philadelphia. They had two children, but Virginia Fretz died in 1913 at the age of 41. Three years later, Fretz married Mabel Hobson of Collegeville. They also had two children.

Fretz died at his home in Collegeville in 1957 at the age of 93. He and his wives and several of his children and their spouses are buried in Edgewood Cemetery.